The long weekend capping the semestral break with my children gave me some time to ponder on my topic today. I came across a rather speculative read on the distinction between creativity and innovation. These have been buzz words that are commonly applied in business today.

Creativity, in a sense, is putting all brilliant ideas together and thinking of ways to make it happen, while innovation is the actual translation of ideas into action. Do not run after these brilliant ideas and end up empty handed with just a handful of thoughts. Make it happen!

Our good friend and the country’s leading marketing and innovation enabler Josiah Go would often tell us that creativity is your unique differentiated idea, and innovation is how you make this unique ideas translate into commercial value or one that should result in generating sustainable sales (and profits). Creativity is the alpha in every start-up business and innovation is the execution. It is what sets them apart from the others that offer the same product or service.

A real entrepreneur will always find ways to innovate and address an opportunity or market demand gap in the market. It is easy to say that we should innovate but to have a winning idea out there is the hardest to find. It is a product of having a good read of the market need (or anticipating even a consumer want), a lot of consumer research and understanding what they really look for, a factor of right timing as one can be, as we say, ahead of its time. We in business would always want to be the first to introduce a game changer, and we better do good in it if we are to survive in this increasingly competitive marketplace.

Innovations are not 100 percent smooth sailing and failure probabilities appear to be present all the time. What a good business should believe in is that their failures are always a learning experience. We should not be afraid to fail for it is in learning from our failures that leads us to success.

For me, the equation that can sum up to success is to cultivate a culture of creativity in any organization. It is not the monopoly of the CEO or the management. The culture and thinking must be encouraged across all levels. The idea generation can be made fun as well, let us say, by coming up with a search or competition, and even involving your customers, getting insights from them and now with growing social media networks, this becomes a regular part of our life.

To generate more awareness and learn more about this important factor in business, we are mounting on Nov. 19 the Go Negosyo Creativity and Innovation Summit at the SMX Convention Center. We have on board as program partner Mansmith and Fielders Inc. led by Josiah Go. Go Negosyo and Mansmith are putting up a whole day program filled with creative people and innovators themselves – entrepreneurs who have applied creativity and innovation in either their offering or in their operations.

Keynoting will be Sec. Ramon Jimenez, who is I would say, a leading innovator in promoting our country as the top tourist destination in the world. It is natural for him coming from the field of marketing and advertising prior to joining government. I remember when we started with Selecta, we got his agency and we know that their husband and wife team are really very creative. We have also invited Senator Bam Aquino, being a strong advocate of youth in entrepreneurship. Our partners from the British Embassy led by Ambassador Asif Ahmad will also join us as this summit is part of our participation in the Global Entrepreneurship Week.

We are also fortunate to get the confirmation of Go Negosyo advocates like Injap Sia who will share his innovations when he started the famous Mang Inasal and how he has expanded his horizon to property and tourism development through Double Dragon Properties and Hotel of Asia Inc.- Hotel 101. We will also have other innovators and marketing icons Johnlu Koa (French Baker), Jay Aldeguer (The Islands Group), Tommany Tan (FERN C), RJ David (sulit.com.ph), Anna Meloto Wilk (Human Heart Nature), Earl Valencia (Ideaspace Foundation), and Mitch Padua (Smart Voyager Innovation). We will also be joined by a British social entrepreneur, Philip Tulba who helps develop a lot of innovative business models and social enterprises in UK.

As of today, over two thousand SME’s and business students in their junior and senior years have already confirmed, and we anticipate more to join as we get them to realize the importance of creativity and innovation in bringing any business model to a much stronger growth and profitable track.